One explanation could be that the city has staggering poverty
affecting specific pockets of the population. Omaha has the unenviable
position of ranking 1st among U.S. cities for the total
number of African Americans who qualify as low-income. John Crank, a criminal justice professor at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha, points to a clustering of the killings in the city’s
most socially deprived areas, mainly in the north. “Most Omaha neighborhoods had no homicides,” says Crank. “The
majority of violent crime and killings are isolated to specific areas.” “A lot is gang-related, a fair amount of retaliation. Then you have
crime committed by gang members that are not acting on behalf of their
gangs.” In reality, the homicide rates for Omaha are dwarfed in comparison to
murder data from the tough streets of Chicago or Detroit, since
Nebraska has a small population.

Below: aftermath of Omaha's newest black homicide and its effect on an investigating officer:

The Washington Blade reports Belize accounts of the murder of a cross-dresser whose brother believes was deliberately targeted.

The Reporter, a Belizean newspaper, reported
two men fatally stabbed Joseph Sanchez, 18, in the chest early on Jan.
12 while walking on a street in Belize City, the country’s largest city.
The publication said authorities found Sanchez wearing a blouse, a short skirt and women’s underwear.Channel 5 Belize reported police have concluded Sanchez was the victim of what the television station described as “an armed robbery turned violent.” Sanchez’s brother, Abner Sanchez, told the Reporter he feels the two
men deliberately targeted Sanchez — reports have emerged that Sanchez
had previously received death threats from a man with whom the
18-year-old had been previously involved.“It was a setup because they called him out of his bed,” Abner
Sanchez told the Reporter. “He doesn’t normally walk those hours. He was
always picked up.” ...Caleb Orozco, co-founder of the United Belize Advocacy Movement
(UNIBAM), an HIV/AIDS advocacy group, expressed concern over the
Belizean government’s response to Sanchez’s murder. “It is my hope they don’t contaminate evidence in this case,” Orozco
told the Washington Blade last week, citing a 2009 murder in which a
court released the suspected perpetrator after alleging authorities
forced him to confess to killing his partner. ...Anti-LGBT violence and discrimination remain a serious problem in
Belize in spite of the government’s recent efforts to combat it.A Southern Poverty Law Center report
highlights U.S. religious groups that have backed Belize Action, a
group that opposes efforts to overturn the Central American country’s
anti-sodomy law. The organization said these efforts have inflamed
existing homophobic attitudes in Belize

Thursday, January 30, 2014

On Jan. 20th, the home of three members of Alternative Cote d'Ivoire in an upscale neighborhood of Abidjan, Ivory Coast were set upon by dozens of assailants who shouted death threats and hurled rocks and garbage.

Soon after returning home from work shortly before 7 p.m., Touré said, the three Alternative CI staff members noticed that a crowd of about 60 people had assembled outside, whistling and banging on pots and pans. They threatened the occupants of the “faggot house,” shouting, “We will kill them,” “We don’t want fags in our city,” “We don’t want people with AIDS in our neighborhood,” “We’ll kill you all,” “We don’t want people working with AIDS and queers here,” “Damn you! We’ll burn your ass.” Alternatives Cote d’Ivoire reported further: The mob kept up the racket as it tried to break down the doors of the house with rocks and metal bars. They threw garbage and human excrement, then prepared Molotov cocktails to burn the building and the people inside. The police arrived just in time to intervene... On the day after the Jan. 20 attack, the LGBT activists and police met again at the police station and immediately began arguing. The argument began after the chief asked a colleague whether he had “handled the case of the queers who disturbed public order.” The chief then turned to the Alternatives CI staff and said, “You’re the ones who are pimping and running a brothel, huh?” Touré denied it and added, “You should listen to us first.” “But you admitted that yesterday in the presence of the duty officer,” the chief said. Touré denied that also. The chief responded, “So you mean that the officer lied? In any case, I don’t want to hear about homosexuality in my town.” Agence de Presse Africaine (APA) ... [adopted] the neighbors’ anti-gay position in an article that Abidjan.net titled, “Eviction of a group of homosexuals in a posh neighborhood of Abidjan.” The article begins, “A group of homosexuals, posing a threat to the education of children in a district of Abidjan, was driven off Tuesday evening by local residents.”

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Hannity had threatened to leave after his state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, suggested that far-right politicos running for office are not welcome in New York. At 3:26 a hardhat even promises Hannity that the Keystone XL pipeline will be routed through Central Park if he only agrees not to abandon New York.

Baby boomers are most familiar with the version popularized by eccentric musicologist and ukelele star Tiny Tim, whose rendition of the song charted at #17 in 1968, the year in which he performed the standard on the Tonight Show, (below) and a year before he gave Johnny Carson his highest-ever rating by marrying 17-year-old "Miss Vicki" on the host's NBC late night talk show, attended by a studio audience of 268 family members and friends and watched later that night via tape-delay by 45 million Americans.

America was introduced to Tiptoe Through The Tulips in the now-lost 1929 two-strip technicolor talkie, Gold Diggers of Broadway (later remade in black and white as Gold Diggers of 1933) by Nick Lucus. Below is Lucas singing the song 15 years later.

AKSARBENT really likes Robbie Banfitch's cover of Tim's version used in the 2011 horror film Insidious.

Friday, January 24, 2014

The Guardian reports that a Columbus, Ohio man was rousted from his seat by cops and Homeland Security while he was watching Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at an AMC multiplex. The man's Glass was switched off during the movie; he was wearing it for its prescription lens. Nevertheless:

"A guy comes near my seat, shoves a badge that had some sort of a
shield on it, yanks the Google Glass off my face and says 'Follow me
outside immediately'," said the man, who was taken into a room for
interrogation... After a long time
somebody came with a laptop and an USB cable at which point he told me
it was my last chance to come clean. I repeated for the hundredth time
there is nothing to come clean about and this is a big misunderstanding
so the [ICE officer] finally connected my Glass to the computer,
downloaded all my personal photos and started going though them one by
one … Then they went through my phone, and five minutes later they
concluded I had done nothing wrong." He wasn't apologised to, but was
offered four free movie passes, which "infuriated" him. The ICE's
Khaalid Walls confirmed the incident took place, and AMC responded with a
statement: "Movie theft is something we take very seriously, and our
theatre managers contact the Motion Picture Association of America any
time it's suspected that someone may be illegally recording content on
screen. While we're huge fans of technology and innovation, wearing a
device that has the capability to record video is not appropriate at the
movie theatre."

Here's what AMC evidently does consider appropriate behavior at its theatres by its employees:

Making false and defamatory statements about the behavior of a customer to government agents who subsequently rifled through the private photos of said customer

Not bothering to assess whether a device with a recording "capability" actually was turned on before accusing someone of pirating a film by rephotographing it

Thinking it could buy off someone with four free movie passes after humiliating him, detaining him and invading his privacy

AMC Theatres' 5000+ screens were purchased in 2012 by billionaire Wang Jianlan of China, which only allows about 34 foreign movies to be exhibited in its country per year.
AMC, the headquarters of which is in Kansas City, MO, was previously owned by several private equity owners (including Mitt Romney's Bain Capital) which, according to a senior AMC executive, allowed the chain's venues to deteriorate physically relative to competitors, even forgoing changing bulbs frequently enough to ensure that exhibited features did not appear dim to audiences.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Preposterously pretentious Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lifshitz and now worth about $6.5 billion) is currently famous for his unrelenting Downton Abbey commercials on PBS, and must either hate jocks or has entered into a secret pact with Queer Nation to punish athletes who aren't boycotting Sochi, if his Team USA opening ceremonies outfits are any indication.
Norwegian curlers, unlike "Lauren," obviously don't take themselves seriously or expect anyone who sees their getup to do anything but grin, which, if you think about it, is a pretty good strategy to win over spectators.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

...noted
with pride that Russia saw more births than deaths last year for the
first time in two decades. Population growth is vital for Russia's
development and "anything that gets in the way of that we should clean
up," he said, using a word usually reserved for military operations.

John Aravosis did the requisite Google searches and connected all the dots in his blog.Coca-Cola, of course, has a long Olympic history, some of which you will never, ever see at the company's museum in Atlanta. From America
Blog: Pavel Lebedev was jumped by officials in official Olympic gear, later
identified by the Associated Press as “Olympic security officials.” What was not known at that time was that the standard uniform of the
Olympic security officials who assaulted the civil rights advocate
appears to sport the Coca-Cola logo. Keep in mind that no one sports
the Coca-Cola logo, or any other logo of an Olympic sponsor, without
Coke’s explicit permission.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Both of these examples come from Copyranter. If the ad below, one of a string of stellar efforts made for the New Zealand Transport Agency, can't get leadfoots to slow down, then there is nothing mere advertising can do for them.

The second ad, for a publisher of men's magazines, actually ran in 2007, although where was tactfully not mentioned.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Five-year-old Payton Benson, the grand-niece of Councilman Ben Gray,
was killed by a stray bullet this morning from a gunfight a block away
from her home at 45th & Bedford just after she had put up her
breakfast plate.
A $5,000 reward from Crimestopper's general fund has been offered for information leading to an arrest.
Benson is the latest victim of the unrelenting (and frequently unsolved) number of violent crimes in Omaha
that caused a neighbor of Benson's to tell KMTV that he is ready to leave town.
(AKSARBENT did not embed KMTV's coverage because it is coded to autoplay, which annoys blog readers.)

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Suntory just paid $16 billion for Jim Beam. Budweiser was acquired years ago by the Belgian/Brazilian conglomerate InBev. Miller isn't a U.S. beer either.

Related: Dry drunk Phil Robertson discovered that Satan and a permissive 60s culture — not himself — were responsible for the eight years of liquor and substance abuse in his 20s that caused him to savagely beat a bar owner and his wife over a rent dispute, sending them to the hospital and forcing his wife and small sons to fend for themselves while he hid in the woods of a neighboring state from the Louisiana State Patrol for four months.
After repeatedly kicking his wife and kids out of the house, Robertson finally straightened up.
Nowadays, the only people Robertson assaults are LGBTs, with biblical clobber phrases from the Apostle Paul.
Curiously, Robertson avoids Corinthians, even as he recites Romans with both relish and Johnny-come-lately sanctimony.

The video appeared one day after the ACLU sued Omaha police over what it contends were civil rights violations in the raid of a North Omaha house in which a wheelchair-bound woman was knocked to the floor and a cellphone, as well as the memory card and the video it contained, disappeared. A video taken by a neighbor unbeknownst to the police went viral on the Internet and four cops were subsequently fired.

Jim Farley, Ford Motor Company’s top sales executive, who is known
for making off-the-cuff comments, told a panel at the CES: “We know
everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS
in your car, so we know what you’re doing.” Although he quickly added,
“By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,” and later issued a
full retraction, the comments, even if overblown and meant to be
provocative, fueled the concerns.

Google, which earns money by tracking computer users' habits (and scanning their emails) and brokering ads targeted at them, recently announced a partnership with G.M., Audi, Honda and Hyundai to
bring Android to vehicles by the end of 2014.

G.M. has introduced a camera in 2015 Corvettes which will be one facet of a so-called Performance Data Recorder that records speed (via GPS), gear selection and brake performance, going much further in recording driver habits and location than already-intrusive, government-mandated Event Data Recorders, the "black boxes" in new cars.

Obviously, all the data in these new devices could be subpoenaed in litigation by adversaries or by insurance companies and used against either the drivers or owners of the vehicles, or both.

Kahliah Barnes, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the Times: “Consumers
should decide what level of surveillance they want to be under. None of that should be on default. You should have to opt
in.”
The EPIC is quite disturbed about the potential of Event Data Recorders, Performance Data Recorders and technologies like GM's OnStar to compromise personal privacy:

Automobiles are integrating computing technology that enhance the
ability of others to collect location and operation data in near real
time. In the data driven economy this data is of value. There are only
13 states with laws that address EDRs and vehicle operators.

Lack of consumer knowledge of the technology's presence in vehicles

Driver Access to EDR data

Security of EDR data to assure chain of custody and accuracy

Transparency on each type of event that would trigger data collection

Universal law that outlines the purpose of the data collection and limits
the use of EDR data to the purpose of the collection

Driver control (ownership) of data

Integration of EDR data collection with non-vehicle operation related features

There are no limits on the number of data elements that NHSTA may require in the future

There are no limits on EDR data collection, retention and use by third-parties

Politico says the Arlington, Va.-based group, called "Freedom Partners," was unknown to nearly everyone in politics; it "raised and spent $250
million in 2012 to shape political and policy debate nationwide," cutting checks as large as $63,000,000 to conservative advocacy groups:

The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in
annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in
November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million —
meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only
to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together
spent about $300 million.

After a stint in the military and 30 years at the phone company, Patricia "Big Mama" Barron, started what has become the city's best-known soul food restaurant, where she and her manager/daughter Gladys serve delicacies including [pig] ear sandwiches at the converted kitchen/cafeteria of a closed Nebraska School for the Deaf she bought in the 90s.
AKSARBENT does not opine, it just reports.
Below is a segment (at the 13 minute mark) introducing Big Mama's Kitchen from Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. More information about the new show is here.

Friday, January 10, 2014

USA Today interviewed Heidi Cullinan, who said that her pharmacist husband reads all her explicit male/male romance novels and does initial editing.
AKSARBENT would love to know what husband Dan edits and why.
Cullinan's 12-year-old daughter isn't allowed to read the books in her series, all of which which come with teasers warnings.Our mom just sold Avon, but then she never went to one of those Iowa City writer's workshops.

Rep. Weber and the Texas district that elected him,
including Arlington, Galveston, Port Arthur and
Beaumont

Freshman U.S. Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX), a former HVAC repairman who won the seat vacated by retiring fellow crackpot Ron Paul, has
introduced H.R. 3829, which will alter the United States Code by redefining "marriage" and "spouse" and "simply" requiring all federal agencies to check the legal residences of married same sex couples
when determining marital status and application of federal law (including, of course, benefits).
Weber's aim is to deny federal benefits and rights to legally married gay couples who live outside the jurisdiction that married them if that jurisdiction doesn't allow gay couples to get married.

Zagat, is celebrating Pizza Week by naming what it considers to be the "standout" pizza in every state.
According to Wikipedia, Zagat was acquired by Google
on September 8, 2011 for a reported $151 million after it withdrew an 2008 IPO which failed to attract the $200 million the company sought.

Google planned to use the acquisition to
provide more content and reviews for its locally oriented services.
Google had initially planned to acquire competing site Yelp instead. On May 30, 2012, Zagat was officially integrated into Google's services, with its reviews now appearing on Google Maps and Google+ Local
pages for relevant restaurants. Additionally, the Zagat.com service
became free to use, but now requires a Google+ account to register.
In December, 2012, Google informed most of the former Zagat
employees, who had been hired as temporary contractors, that their
contracts would expire as of June 30, 2013.

In the absence of comments to the contrary, AKSARBENT will assume everyone in the state agrees with Zagat's selection. LOL.

Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.Update: later reports from other sources say 4,000-5,000 gallons of the below-mentioned chemical were released into West Virginia's water.

Freedom Industries, which was unavailable for comment, allowed, according to ABC News, just 2-3 gallons of a coal preparation foaming agent, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, to overflow a containment facility and spill into the Elk River, near a huge West Virginia American Water plant nearby, one of the largest in the Eastern U.S.
300,000 people are affected in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam, and Roane counties.

Norwegian cross country skier Petter Northug Jr., 28, doubleOlympic champion with one silver, one bronze and two goldmedals won in individual and team events at the 2010Vancouver Winter Olympic Games

In Norway, due to generous farm subsidies, dairy cows in the Arctic live in heated barns.
One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working, even though the "official" unemployment rate is 3.3 percent.
Why is the country so well-heeled when others are struggling under a mountain of debt?
Because in 1990 the country set up a sovereign wealth fund to invest and distribute the profits from Norway's share of the North Sea oil bonanza, officially called the Government Pension Fund Global, which is now so large it's beginning to affect the tides.
Recently the counter of Norway's central bank displayed a fund total of 5.11 trillion crowns ($931.87 billion), fractionally more than a million times Norway's most recent official population estimate of 5,096,300, according to bank's website.
The fund owns about one percent of the world's stocks.

NorthJersey.com just published a trove of Chris Christie administration emails
busting months of denials by the GOP governor that hours-long traffic
tie-ups on the George Washington Bridge were the results of a "study" by
the state's Port Authority and not political payback using commuters as
pawns to the mayor of Ft. Lee for not being loyal enough to Chris
Christie's administration. From the website:

Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two
of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort
to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. The messages are replete with references and insults to Fort Lee’s
mayor, who had failed to endorse Christie for re-election and they
chronicle how local officials tried to reach the Port Authority in a
vain effort to eliminate the paralyzing gridlock that overwhelmed his
town of 35,000, which sits in the shadow of the bridge, the world’s
busiest.

Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer, above, who has no
control over what the police union posts on its web site,
said this: "I strongly disagree with any postings that may
cause a divide in our community or an obstacle to police
community relations."

Some cops are chagrined, starting with police chief Todd Schmaderer. After KETV asked him why the post was still up after stirring up controversy on CNN, Omaha Police Officer's Association President John Wells defended the video by saying "We gotta find a way to address this," meaning a criminal culture. From where AKSARBENT sits, Wells and his fellow officers could start addressing crime by finding out who attacked Ryan Langenegger months ago, after an assault on him by Pepperjax' Grill patrons in Omaha's heavily trafficked Old Market when he stood up for two gay friends, a case still unsolved.The Omaha Police Union posted the video of a black toddler Tuesday, one day after the Nebraska ACLU sued the department over an incident depicted in a viral video last spring.

Monday, January 6, 2014

The Nebraska ACLU hasfiled its lawsuit against the Omaha Police Department over arrival of some two-dozen police at a North Omaha home during the investigation of a parking violation complaint and the subsequent invasion of that home, which was recorded by a neighbor and which was widely viewed on the Internet. Four officers were fired and two were criminally charged.Officer Bradley Canterbury, recorded punching a restrained Octavius after first checking for witnesses (at about the 2:55 mark in the video below), has not been criminally charged by Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who claimed three national use-of-force experts reviewed the video and concluded that Canterbury's actions did not merit criminal charges.The Omaha Police Officers Association has assisted Canterbury in his efforts to get his job back.

As the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2011, a foundation funded by Koch gave $1.5 million to the school’s economics
department in 2008, in exchange for Koch having the power to select members of an “advisory committee” that screens prospective new hires. A year later, Koch reportedly rejected 60 percent of job candidates suggested by FSU faculty.

The bottom line here is that Starnes clearly claims that Christmas Cards are banned by the VA’s policy when they are not. And he clearly edits the VA’s official statement to deceive his readers.

In order to be respectful of our Veterans religious beliefs, all donated
holiday cards are reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team of staff led by
Chaplaincy services and determined if they are appropriate
(non-religious) to freely distribute to patients. After the
review is complete, the holiday cards that reference religious and/or
secular tones are then distributed by Chaplaincy Service on a one-on-one
basis if the patient agrees to the religious reference in the holiday
card donation. The holiday cards that do not contain religious and/or
secular tones are distributed freely to patients across the Health Care
System. We regret this process was not fully explained to this group and apologize for any misunderstanding.

Her death, of kidney failure, on November 13, 2013, was not reported until January 3, 2014. After retiring from acting (she also did TV, having been cast on four Perry Mason episodes) she became a publicist, author and real estate agent.
In the Oklahoma, clip below, Lawrence affects a terrifying laugh while obsequiously chatting up Gordon MacRae. Nearby, a worried Shirley Jones watches from the porch under a glorious New Mexico sky, where most Oklahoma exteriors were filmed.

He ate everything on the menu, but limited himself to 2,000 calories per day in a program designed by his students, who used the chain's online nutritional information. He also began a 45 minutes-per-day walking regimen.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Note: We were going to accompany this post with a funny picture of a constituent sizing up Aaron Shock, but for the third time in six months Blogger prevented us from posting a photo. Instead we got the following Google Blogger error message: "There was an error! Details: The feature you requested is currently unavailable. Please try again later." The message appeared in a dialogue box with no 'close' or 'exit' buttons. The last two times we encountered an unexplained temporary Google blogger refusal to post pictures the embargo lasted from 12-48 hours, with no official apology or acknowledgement from Google, just the reappearance of the feature.

In his post today, GOP Congressman Aaron Schock Locks Down Instagram Account Amid Gay Rumors,Andy Towle seems to have drawn a line between evidence of stereotypical behavior accompanied by a heavy dose of insinuation and hard facts in respect of Illinois Congressman Aaron Shock's purported sexual orientation and the hypocrisy of his house votes against the legitimate civil rights aspirations of LGBTs, were he to be a member of said group:

Hod's post to Facebook appears to have beeninspired by a post blogger John Aravosis posted to Americablog on Thursday which hypothesized that Schock might be gay based on interpretations of photos from his Instagram account. What is lacking so far in any of the discussion, as amusing or
voyeuristic as it may be, is any sort of direct testimony or evidence of
Schock's sexual orientation. Can someone be "outed" by a belt? Or for the care they take of their body? Or something heard from a friend of a friend of a friend? Is determining someone's sexual orientation based on how they look an appropriate avenue because the person is a villain, or is it simply undercutting the LGBT community's arguments against stereotypes and defamatory phrases
like "that's so gay"?

Robertson's abridged comments are from Romans 1:26-32, an attack by
the Christian Apostle Paul on shrine prostitution repurposed by Robertson
to clobber modern LGBTs

In a fund­raising email, Iowa Rep. Steve King com­pared his enemies to critics of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, saying his views are:“contrary to views held by those with loud megaphones, including the liberal media and PC police…the leftists who disagree with him made it clear with their attacks that conservatives are to be driven from public life if they express their opinions, however objectively true they might be. Duck Dynasty illustrates faith, family and good, old-fashioned American values. And this attack illustrates the left’s unspoken rule that tolerance is a one way street. Conservatives are to be tolerant of liberal ideology; however, the left need not be tolerant of conservative Christians. I have been in similar situations to the one Phil Robertson finds himself in now. I have learned to navigate their intolerance while holding firm to our values. Whether it’s the Robertsons or anyone who finds themselves in the crosshairs of the media or a leftist hyperventilater sitting across the table at the local diner, employ this strategy: “Don’t back down. If you are right and you are standing on principle, whatever you do, don’t back down. The second you back down, they win. “Don’t apologize. John Wayne said, “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.” I agree, unless we are wrong and we are not wrong. “Double down. Americans recognize courage and conviction. If the left attacks our conservative beliefs, I say, “If you don’t like that, here’s some more.” “Never waiver from the truth. This includes taking on all the left’s false premises before they become the perceived truth. The left is not held accountable to the truth — it is our duty to expose them. Objective truth is a shield protecting us from the left. “Tolerance has never been a two-way street with the left. Time and time again conservatives are lambasted for stating their opinions, the opinions derived from faith, family, and an understanding of history. Once again the left encourages a double standard to advance their agenda. “As you know, I have not and will not back down. And like other conservatives who stand their ground, I’m always a top target of the left. “Last election cycle, Col. Allen West, Michele Bachmann, and I were the three top targets of the liberals throughout the country. With Col. West’s defeat and now Michele’s retirement, I’m the last one standing.
Jim Mowrer, a Boone native and Iraq war veteran will challenge King next November for the 4th Congressional District, covering northwest/north-central Iowa Sioux City, Fort Dodge and Ames.

Mowrer told the Des Moines Register Thursday that if he is elected to Congress he won’t feel a need to comment on “every silly story of the day,” but will work to find solutions to very real problems the country is facing. He said King’s remarks are an example of why Washington, D.C. and Congress are “broken.” “I will work to focus on ensuring job opportunities, investment and infrastructure, clean American energy and getting a farm bill passed,” Mowrer said. “I don’t have a comment on Congressman King’s comments on a reality TV show actor’s comments.”

Phil, the son of folk singers Ike and Margaret Everly, was born Jan. 19th 1939, two years after his brother Don. Between 1957 and 1962 the Everly Brothers scored 19 top 40 hits and are in both the rock and roll and country music halls of fame.

The squabbling siblings broke up for 16 years at a 1973 Knott's Berry
Farm concert in California at which Phil threw his guitar on the stage
and walked off.

Everly's son Jason said the COPD that killed his father never seemed to affect his voice.

...while Elvis Presley was the king of rock 'n' roll,
Phil and Don Everly were its troubled princes. They sang dark songs
hidden behind deceptively pleasing harmonies and were perfect
interpreters of the twitchy hearts of millions of baby boomer teens
coming of age in the 1950s and '60s looking to express themselves beyond
the simple platitudes of the pop music of the day.

The Everlys dealt in the entire emotional spectrum with an authenticity
that appealed to proto rockers like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who
gladly pass the credit for the sea changes they made in rock to the
ruggedly handsome brothers. The Beatles, the quartet whose pitch-perfect
harmonies set the pop music world aflame, once referred to themselves
as "the English Everly Brothers." And Dylan, pop culture's poet
laureate, once said, "We owe these guys everything. They started it
all."

Two generations later, artists are still finding inspiration in the
music. Most recently, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones
lovingly recorded a tribute to the Everlys and their unique album "Songs
Our Daddy Taught Us."

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.